1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interactive voice response (IVR) and more particularly to computer generated prompting for IVR.
2. Description of the Related Art
IVR systems have revolutionized industrial call processing and find wide application across multiple industries—particularly with respect to industrial customer service. An IVR system is an automated call processing system providing self-service interactions with callers through a telephone call. The most basic IVR system provides a sequence of prompts that vary according to caller selections—generally provided in the form of dial tones or spoken choices. More advanced IVR systems handle natural language input from callers in order to properly service caller requests. Even more advanced IVR systems provide an escalation path in which callers ultimately can be routed to a human operator when requested by the caller, or when detected as necessary, but otherwise provide automated responses in the absence of human intervention.
IVR systems usually include a computing system with a call processing gateway between the computing logic of the IVR system and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In this regard, the call processing gateway generally includes hardware configured for coupling to the PSTN and also to a data communications pathway, either through direct bus connection of the computing system, or a packet switched network connection to a remote server. Some IVR systems include pre-recorded audible responses triggered for playback in response to user input while other IVR systems process scripts such as Voice Extensible Markup Language (VXML) compliant scripts and dynamically generate audible responses—typically by way of a text-to-speech (TTS) engine or through a combination of TTS and pre-recorded audio. Even more advanced IVR systems process spoken user input by way of a speech recognition engine in order to properly select a response to a user inquiry.
The effectiveness of an IVR system often rests with the selection and sequencing of prompts provided to a caller. In response to each prompt provided in a prompt set by the IVR system to the caller, the caller can select a desired option—through the use of dial tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones to key a selection, or through voice recognition of a spoken selection. In any event, because prompts in an option set provided by an IVR system are spoken by the IVR system and recognized aurally by the caller, in many cases the spoken prompts provided to a caller can be confusing. Consequently, frequently callers select incorrect options in response to the prompts of the option set unintentionally.
Recognizing the potential for callers to select incorrect options in response to aurally recognized prompts in an option set, methods have been proposed to provide for the concurrent visual presentation of prompts in a Web interface. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,324,633 to Gao et al., a web integrated interactive voice response system is described to include an IVR system adapted to different voice menus to a user over a telephone, and a graphical user interface system adapted to provide the different menus in a graphical format to the user over a network connection. Even still, the mere visual display of an IVR option set does not account for the uncertainty faced by callers in making a selection of an option in a prompted option set.